TransLink’s Bamboozle Begins.

It is to be expected, TransLink wants more of your money so out rolls the propaganda machine claimingAi?? increased ridership, Howrah!

Translation; “We want to bamboozle the NDP to give us more money for our two vanity projects, the Broadway subway and the Surrey LRT.

The late Carl Sagan had something to say about being bamboozled:

ai???One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If weai??i??ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. Weai??i??re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. Itai??i??s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that weai??i??ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.ai???

The problem for TransLink is that their claims do not match the operation of the transit system.

The new Compass Card is very good in calculating ridership because it collects money, thus TransLink knows exactly how many people are using transit, down to the last nickle (pennies are now obsolete), thus TransLink knows daily the number of unique transactions on the Compass Card and the number of unique transit actions would tell TransLink the actual number of people entering the transit system! TransLink would also know the exact amount of transfers a Compass Card customer would make. But TransLink doesn’t use that data, TransLink uses the easily toAi?? manipulate boarding’s and percentages.

Hint #1: Most people who use SkyTrain first transfer from a bus, are they counted twice?

Hint #2: The U-Pass, with over 130,000 issued allows unlimited daily travel and can be used upwards of 8 times per day per person.

The ALRT/ART light-metro system’s MoT operating certificate allows a maximum hourly capacity of 15,000 pphpd and in the past, according to TransLink, the system was carrying near this number; but wait it really wasn’t because ridership on SkyTrain has grown by almost 12% – really? That would mean SkyTrain would be carrying at least 1,000 pphpd more than it was legally entitled to.

So in reality SkyTrain has been carrying far less than TransLink would have us believe. Tsk, tsk!

In the future the public must demand:

TransLink give daily ridership stats from unique use of the Compass Card.

TransLink give the number of transfers, recorded by the Compass Card.

Ai??TransLink give the actual number of U-passes being used and the total numbers of times the U-Pass is used each day.

By having the actual hard numbers via the Compass Card, the public will be given a far clear picture of TransLink’s operation. But this news item was never about the transit system, rather it is a bamboozle to create the the myth that TransLink needs a massive infusion of money to keep operating, from the new NDP government.